Will Brooks and the Murdochs face another kangaroo court?

When Tony Hayward was hauled up before a US congressional committee in June last year, the result – as Richard Preston wrote at the time – was a shabby little show trial. Grandstanding American politicians took turns to give the British boss of BP a savage kicking. And I remember thinking: even this prat doesn't deserve this. The pompous sermons, the framed photos of oil-covered pelicans – it was political waterboarding, the humiliation of a captured foreign agent purely for electoral gain.

But I was naive, and thought this phenomenon was confined to America. Shamefully, it's not: when John Yates faced Parliament's Select Committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday, we witnessed a little taster of political waterboarding, British-style.

Yates, the head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism branch, apologised profusely for his mistakes made during the first inquiry into the phone hacking scandal. It didn't stop him being systematically humiliated by Parliament's kangaroo court. Keith Vaz, the supercilious chair of the committee, even concluded that Yates's evidence had been "unconvincing". This statement was made on behalf of the entire committee – yet, as the Telegraph's leader noted the next day, Vaz had not consulted any of his colleagues before uttering it.

On Tuesday Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and Rebekah Brooks – who has at last resigned as CEO of News International – will appear in front of the Commons Culture Committee. So what should we expect? Well, judging by what an unnamed member of that committee told the Guardian yesterday, the very worst:

We have taken it to Defcon Two. Whether we go up another notch is up to the house. We have been advised that parliament could vote to imprison them.

Defcon Two. That means code red – and ready for war. The Murdochs are now spoken of like foreign agents who have been captured by our brave Parliamentarians.

Bravery doesn't enter into it. Many of the major culprits in this affair – those who carried News International's disease into the heart of Government – sit on the front benches. They include the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and by extension Ed Miliband, who is trying to sell the idea that Murdoch has had to "bend to the will" of Parliament. Nonsense: Murdoch and Parliament have finally had to bend to the will of the people.

But here's the problem. Tuesday's Commons Culture Committee hearing – chaired by John Whittingdale, a man who was defending News Corp just earlier this month – is all we have to deal with the rot. Plainly, the police cannot be fully trusted. So we must rely on these ten MPs to begin to restore dignity to the British establishment. It's a chilling thought.